Whispering Shadows by Jan-Philipp Sendker
“Hello, Paul, it’s Zhang here.” He spoke slowly and clearly into his cell phone. Paul would think he was crazy when he got this message. “I got your call. You didn’t sound too good. I’m very sorry that you’re so badly affected by this death and that you’re not well. It’s almost five PM now, and I’m on my way to see you. If I get a cheap ferry, I’ll be in Lamma in two or two and a half hours. I’ve taken tomorrow off and can stay till tomorrow evening. See you soon.”
Then Zhang rang his boss and asked for a day off because he wanted to visit his friend in Hong Kong, who wasn’t well. Luo Mingliang agreed at once. The relief in his voice was clear.
XIV
The water was warm and soft and ran down Paul’s body as if he were standing under a shower. He had gotten soaked through walking just a few steps so he had given up shielding himself against the rain. He had closed the umbrella, which was far too small, wrapped his cell phone and his wallet in a thin plastic bag, and now sat unprotected on the pier, waiting patiently for the ferry. He estimated that Zhang would be on one of the next two vessels.
It was pouring so hard that the lights of Cheung Chau and Lantau had vanished behind a wall of rain. Only the children among the passersby took any notice of him. They pointed at him, the madman who was simply ignoring the storm, they laughed or waved, and he smiled back.
Zhang came on the express just before 8 PM. He wobbled down the shaky gangway, lost for words at the sight of his friend soaked through, stared at the rain for a few seconds, weighing up the chances of even reaching the Sampan with dry feet, and turned down Paul’s offer of his umbrella with thanks. They walked down the jetty, past the post office and the fish tanks in which lobsters, crabs, snails, and mussels awaited their end, and entered the restaurant. They sat in the covered terrace right by the harbor, and Paul ordered sweet and sour soup, a steamed fish, and vegetables for them both. The rain drummed loudly against the plastic roof and they had to lean far forward over the table to hear each other.
“Sorry about the somewhat confusing message earlier,” Zhang said, after he had rubbed a hot towel over his face.
“What was wrong with you? I had no idea what you were talking about.”
“I’m sorry. I wanted to put my coworkers off the trail in case they really are spying on me.”
“Spying on you? Do you really think so?” Paul asked.
Zhang told him everything about his conversation with the workers from Cathay Heavy Metal and his meeting with Luo.
“I still don’t think he’s having you watched. After all, your visit to the factory wasn’t a secret.”
“That’s true. But why did Luo give me such a stark warning? I’ve never seen him behave like that.”
“You told me yourself that the murder of a foreigner in China was an unusual thing.”
“So it would have made more sense to press on with my investigation rather than to tell me not to do anything.”
“I thought he was already on the trail and had a suspect.”
“That’s right. Surely that should be another reason for him to be a bit more relaxed about what I was doing.”
Paul didn’t know what to say. He himself was not even sure he really wanted to know anything more about this case. Michael Owen was dead, and he could do nothing else for his parents. Their son’s murderer would be caught sooner or later and punished; Paul believed the Chinese police would do this. He had promised Christine he would neither get further involved nor travel to China again, and he wanted to keep his promise.
“You don’t want to have anything more to do with this, do you?” Zhang said, as though reading his mind.
Why was he giving him such an angry look? “I don’t know if there’s anything else I can do,” Paul said evasively.
“Go to Michael Owen’s apartment with me, for one thing.”
“Are you serious?”
Zhang nodded.
“I don’t have the key.”
“But his mother does. We could arrange it with her tomorrow morning.”
Paul leaned back in his chair, thinking. “What do you want to do there?” he said, after a long pause.
“Someone was there looking for something and it’s very likely that that someone is directly or indirectly involved with Michael Owen’s murder. Where did he get the key for the apartment? What was he looking for? Maybe he left traces that you and the parents didn’t notice? In my bag here I have Michael’s hard drive and memory chips, all secured with passwords and PINs. It’s possible he wrote them down somewhere or that his parents know what they are.”
Paul sighed. “He who perseveres wins in the end. Which dynasty does that saying come from?”
“None of them. The saying is ‘Perseverance means victory,’ ” Zhang corrected him. “And that was what the great Chairman Mao said.”
———
The next morning they met the Owens at ten o’clock in the Harbour View lobby. Paul had told the couple quite candidly that Zhang wanted to have another look at the apartment. Elizabeth Owen had agreed immediately, but her husband had been very much against it. He could see no reason for it: The investigations were being carried out in Shenzhen; the murder had taken place in China and not in Hong Kong; what could there be to find in the apartment? But his wife had prevailed against him.
They rode the elevator to the thirty-eighth floor in silence. Elizabeth unlocked the apartment door, led Zhang and Paul into the study, and went back into the living room. Richard Owen followed them and stood by the entrance to the study.
“What’s going on here, a search?” he asked, after Zhang had pulled out several drawers in the desk and rummaged around in them.
Paul knelt down on the floor and leafed at random through the files that were scattered around. He had no idea what he was looking for.
Zhang turned on the computer. The screen showed a prompt for the password. He looked over at Richard Owen, who shook his head. “No idea.” He seemed to think for a moment then he said with a sigh, “Try my name.”
The computer showed an error message.
“Or VinceLombardi. All one word.”
“Vince Lombardi?” Paul asked, sounding surprised.
“That would be like Michael. He’s a football fan, really crazy for it. His team is the Green Bay Packers from Wisconsin. Lombardi was their top coach in the 1960s. A legend. You’re American and you don’t know who Vince Lombardi is?”
Paul felt a short sharp prick inside and felt himself shrink back to the awkward, skinny little Paul Leibovitz standing around in a New York schoolyard, not being chosen for any of the baseball, football, or basketball teams because he could neither run fast nor throw or catch a ball well. Back then, the boys had looked at him with the same mixture of pity, astonishment, and contempt that Richard Owen was regarding him with now. He had hated sports ever since. “No,” he said, much more quietly than he intended to. “Never heard of him.”
Another error message flickered on the screen.
Suddenly, Richard Owen’s cell phone started playing the first few notes of Frank Sinatra’s “My Way.” He rushed to answer the call, as if he had been waiting for it for hours.
“Oh, Victor, it’s good to hear from you. Is there any news?”
Paul closed the files and stood up. Zhang had turned around in shock at the sound of the name “Victor.” Zhang did not understand a word of what Richard Owen was saying but the excitement in the man’s voice and his widening eyes told him that something extraordinary had happened.
“My God . . . are you, are you sure . . . so quickly . . . I know . . . of course . . . unbelievable . . . I can’t believe it.”
Richard Owen let himself sink into the chair by the desk. In the meantime, his wife had come into the study from the living room. When he saw her, he nodded at her vigorously and started laughing, as though he had just been told that they had become
“Yes, Elizabeth is right next to me. I’ll tell her everything . . . Thank you . . . no . . . there’s no doubt . . . already signed? By him . . . fine, I’ll be in touch later on. Thank you so, so much for calling . . . of course . . . what a relief.”
Richard Owen put his cell phone down on the desk, took his wife in his arms, and pressed her close.
“Elizabeth. They’ve arrested Michael’s murderer.”
His wife broke free of his embrace and stared at her husband. “How do you know?”
“That was Victor. The police just called him.”
“Who was it? Who killed Michael?”
“A worker from the factory. Shu, Su, or Zu; Victor told me, but I’ve forgotten the name. He had a fight with Michael and hit him with a pipe. There are two eyewitnesses. Then he ran away. The police caught him yesterday at the train station and interrogated him all night. He confessed this morning.”
Paul translated quietly for Zhang, who, agitated, pressed his lips together.
Elizabeth Owen was struggling to gain her composure. It had taken a while for her husband’s words to sink in. Tears ran down her cheeks, and she clasped her hands to her face, sobbing. As though she had hoped until that moment that the arrest of the murderer would bring her son back to life.
Richard Owen looked at his wife helplessly. When he had told her the news he had looked strangely relieved, almost euphoric. Only now did his lips begin to tremble; he turned his back to them abruptly. After a few seconds, he had command of himself again. He turned to Zhang. “Your colleagues have done excellent work,” he said in a formal voice. “My wife and I owe you many thanks.”
Paul translated, and Zhang nodded politely, but Paul could see from the look on his face that he was not really listening at all.
“Do you still have anything left to do here? If not, I’m sure you will understand that my wife and I would like to be left on our own now.”
Richard Owen walked them to the door. He could hardly wait to get rid of them. They said good-bye, got into the elevator in silence, and took a taxi back to the ferry terminal in Central.
The next ferry was an old vessel; instead of sitting in the air-conditioned cabin, Paul requested that they sit in the open air on the stern. There was an unpleasant smell of diesel there, but there was a light breeze blowing and they had a good view of Kowloon and Hong Kong Island. It was an oppressive, overcast day; the blue-gray clouds hung so low that they surrounded the Peak and the tops of the IFC and the Bank of China tower. The ferry chugged wearily through the churning waters of the harbor, and Paul looked at the Hong Kong skyline, where the western end of the island between Sai Ying Pun and Kennedy Town was almost entirely filled with thirty- or forty-story apartment buildings.
They left Hong Kong behind them and crossed the East Lamma Channel, passing two enormous container ships that were anchored in front of Lamma. They had not exchanged a single word yet on the ride, and Paul was beginning to find his friend’s silence a bit odd. What was he thinking? Their search in Michael Owen’s apartment had not been successful, but the case seemed to be solved. So why did Zhang look so depressed?
“What are you thinking, Zhang?”
Zhang gave him a long look. His eyes looked tired. “I don’t know what to think of the whole thing. Perhaps you can help me.”
“Me? How?”
After a long silence, Zhang said, “Tell me if you believe what you heard. And be honest.”
“Why wouldn’t I be honest with you?”
“Because you want to believe it.”
He could not deny that. Paul had felt more and more relieved as he had heard the news about the arrest and the confession, and he did not want to give any further thought to the possibility that a mistake had been made.
“Why shouldn’t it be true?” he replied.
“Sure, nowadays it’s not unheard of for a worker to kill his boss in China,” Zhang said, as though thinking aloud. “But a foreigner?”
“But the workers told you that there had already been a fight and a brawl a couple of days ago. Why shouldn’t that have escalated?”
“To murder?”
“Why not? Perhaps this Zu or whatever he’s called is related to one of the men who died in the accident at the factory? Maybe he wanted revenge. Who knows?”
“Maybe.”
“Apart from that, he confessed to the crime. Does that count for nothing?”
Paul saw the doubt in Zhang’s face. His friend had once told him how confessions came about in Chinese prisons. There were two rooms in the basement of the police headquarters that practically no one was allowed entry to, into which particularly silent or intractable suspects vanished for a few hours or even for a few days. But would they name an innocent man as the murderer in such a sensitive case as this one? Paul could not believe they would.
“What will happen now?”
“The wretched fellow will be assigned a defense counsel and in a few weeks or months the trial will take place. He’ll be sentenced to death and soon after that he’ll be shot.”
“Shot?” Paul exclaimed in amazement, regretting his naïvety as soon as he said this.
“What else? Murder gets the death penalty in China. Have you forgotten?” He paused briefly. “So you don’t have any doubts about what you heard?”
“Zhang!” Paul shouted fiercely. “I have no idea, goddamn it. Maybe the worker struck out in rage. Maybe the Triads are behind it because Michael Owen did some shady business. Maybe it was an assassination ordered by a competitor. How should I know? What do you want from me?”
Zhang took two deep breaths in and out before he replied. “All I’m asking you is to take a few seconds, close your eyes, and listen within yourself. That’s all.”
“My inner voice tells me . . .”
“You didn’t even stop and close your eyes,” Zhang interrupted.
Paul fell silent.
The ferry stopped at Lamma. They disembarked in silence, bought water, fruit, vegetables, tofu, and rice for lunch at Yung Shue Wan and climbed the hill to Tai Peng.
Of course he knew what Zhang wanted from him. They had had many discussions about their inner voice. They both agreed that everyone’s was unique to them but that only very few people listened to theirs; yes, it was often difficult enough to even be aware of it with all the distractions of the everyday. Paul had often ignored his inner voice—and had always had to pay the price. But since Justin’s death, his inner voice seemed to have practically died away. There was a bottomless silence within him, and on the rare occasions when a whisper rose, he ignored it. The voice would disrupt the order he had painstakingly constructed in his life. He did not want that. He wanted to go on walks, be alone, and clean the dust of his child’s boots.
When they arrived at the house, Zhang went straight to the kitchen and started cooking. Paul sat down at the counter and started cutting the tofu into cubes.
“I’m sorry I shouted earlier,” he said. “I don’t know what to say. You’re asking too much of me.”
“I was afraid of that, but I’m serious. I need your help. If this worker really is the murderer, who searched Michael’s apartment?”
Paul sighed loudly, took hold of a bunch of spring onions, and sliced them thinly. “If I think about it long enough of course I have doubts. But what would they lead to?”
Zhang turned around and gave him a questioning look.
“Many years ago,” Paul continued, “I was in love with a woman who was afraid of how her family would react and who refused to have a relationship with me, saying, ‘I’m from Hong Kong. The first thing I always ask myself is, What will this cost me?’ I’ve never forgotten those words and I hear them again now. I have no idea what it will cost us—you and me—if Michael Owen’s murderer is still at large, but my instincts tell me that it would be a high price indeed,
Zhang reflected on this for a long time. Then he said, “I understand. But would you at least do me the favor of trying one more time to get into the hard drive this evening? Maybe we’ll be lucky and find the right code. I’ll read the report on the interrogation of the suspect tomorrow. Maybe we really do have the murderer already and we’re wasting our time with these thoughts.”
“Okay,” Paul promised. The probability of getting into the hard drive was practically zero.
After dinner they sat on the terrace, drank tea, and played two games of Chinese chess before Zhang left for Shenzhen. He had told Luo that he would be back at work the next day.
———
When he was alone again, Paul cleaned the house, swept the garden, and wondered what else he could do to put off getting to grips with the computer.
What password would a football fan use? Vince Lombardi and the Green Bay Packers already presented thousands of possibilities. The name of Michael’s favorite player. Or his date of birth. The name of the quarterback who had played the last time the team won the Super Bowl. The number of touchdowns he made. Paul looked up the team’s website. They had won the Super Bowl four times. He typed “Lombardi4” into the password field. Error message. “Lambeau,” the name of their stadium? Error message. “Bart Starr,” the quarterback in the 1960s? No. Paul stared at the screen and thought again. He had used “Justin95” for all his accounts, PINs, and passwords. A name and a year. Which year would be the most important for a team’s fan? The year it was founded? “GreenBayPackers1911.” No way, Paul thought. Which fan would be interested in when a team was formed? What counted was championship titles; he’d gathered that much about sports. “GreenBayPackers1967,” the year in which they first won the Super Bowl. No. He remembered how the other boys used to talk about the Yankees, the Giants, or the 49ers. Sports fans loved team nicknames, “Packers1967.” Wrong. “Packer67.” Right. The password window disappeared, and Paul startled. As though a stranger had suddenly put a hand on his shoulder.